


Echo and Narcissus

by SweetSorcery



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Masturbation, Unrequited Love, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:58:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetSorcery/pseuds/SweetSorcery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Tom seeks is perfection and, to achieve it, he needs no one but himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echo and Narcissus

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All canon referred to within belongs to J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, Warner Bros. Inc., and possibly others. Non-canon bits were created for non-profit, non-infringement entertainment.
> 
> Archiving: Absolutely nowhere please, not even in translated form.
> 
> Author's Notes: This was written in November 2006.  
> (Please note that I may lock my explicit stories to registered users only, once they've been up for a bit.)
> 
>  **Story Notes:** This is a fairy tale for adults, loosely based on the story of the cursed nymph Echo, who fell in love with the beautiful Narcissus but was shunned by him. Narcissus, eventually cursed by another youth who committed suicide to prove his love for him, fell in love with his own reflection in a pool and, doomed never to reach his love, pined and wasted away until only a flower remained in his place - the narcissus.

She adored him from the moment she first laid eyes on him. And almost from that moment on, she knew he would never be hers. Her only comfort was that he would never belong to anyone.

Tom had a way of keeping to himself that spoke of more than a need for privacy. He connected to nothing and no one, despising weakness, attachment and sentimentality of any kind. He carried himself like a prince, above the world and its distractions.

It took years before Minerva had an inkling what kind of goal demanded such undivided attention. Tom's purpose in life was to _be_ and never cease being. He deemed it beneath himself to fall ill or die, and nothing less than immortality would do for him. Minerva had felt this since the day she had seen him prick his finger on a rose he had plucked for his buttonhole. With a look of terrified disgust, he had licked away the blood and pretended the incident had never happened. It was not embarrassment about a moment's clumsiness which made him lie to himself; it was his inability to bear the thought that he might bleed.

Minerva took a long time to gather enough courage to ask Tom what he admired, because she both feared and anticipated his response: perfection. When she asked for clarification, he laughed at her - a bitter, rather sad, laugh.

"You know perfection when you see it, Minerva."

That, she understood.

She strove to be perfect enough to be a match for him. She spent hours brushing her long black hair until it shone, she bathed in milk and honey and scented her satin skin with powders and potions she mixed from ancient recipes. She made herself beautiful in every way she could.

And she went about perfecting her mind as well. She studied harder than any of her classmates, even though intelligence was inherent in her. She surpassed everyone but Tom in her curriculum; even though he was younger than her, he always seemed to know things years before he should have done. She reached the top of the student table in every class, but always remained well behind Tom.

Finally, when he still did not see his idea of perfection in her, she attempted to broaden her horizons. She read books which made her blush, attempted spells no teacher would approve of, and even tried to tell herself that not all Dark Magic was bad, or someone as perfect as Tom surely could not love it so much.

In the end, the most unsavoury magic Minerva would ever master was to become an Animagus. Even at that, she failed - she wanted to be a snake, or at least a lioness, but all she managed was a tabby cat.

Tom observed her transfiguration once and laughed at her. "You'll never be a predator, Minerva. Only a pet."

"I won't mind, if I can be _your_ pet," she whispered in response, but he had already swept away, not hearing her. Or not caring to answer.

She stayed on as an apprentice in Transfiguration after her seventh year, unable to bear the thought of not seeing Tom at least from afar. She watched him shed his fragile, boyish prettiness as if it had been a burden, and don the tormentingly handsome cloak of a young god. From then on, she began to lust for him as much as she had adored him. This was even harder to bear, for with whatever innocence Tom had once possessed, his desire to even mock her had died. She was like air to him.

She watched him turn into a beautiful but empty shell, unable to reach him in any way. She watched life pearl off him like water, watched him care less and less for anything but himself each single day. And finally, she watched him fall in love.

Tom liked to wander the halls at night-time, and on one such night, Minerva followed him under the guise of her assistant teacher's duties. She watched him slip into a bathroom which had remained unused since a girl had died there, and when the door did not click shut behind him, she peered past it and watched him approach one of the sinks.

Tom reached out to trail a long finger along an embossed design on the tap. His full lips twisted into a smirk, and he laughed softly at some private joke. Then he looked up above the sink and into the mirror there. He blinked, almost as if surprised at the sight, and his lips softened into a more agreeable expression. He leaned forward, his hand raised, and traced the outline of his cheekbone on the glass surface. A soft gasp spilled from his lips, as if in reaction to an actual caress. Then his index finger slid down to the reflection of his lips, and he smoothed over it. Retracting his finger and resting it on his lower lip, he opened his mouth and slipped the tip inside. He moaned, letting his lashes flutter closed for a moment, before meeting the velvet grey eyes - for once not cold and distant - in the mirror.

Minerva felt a rush of heat - envy and confusion and lust, all mercilessly taunting her with what she could never have. She wanted to be looked at the way Tom looked at his own reflection. She wanted to be adored like that.

When Tom suddenly moved back from the glass, turning to look around and sneering as if suddenly realising the unsuitability of the location for such a tender display, Minerva barely had time to slip away and hide in an alcove, before he swept from the room and down the corridor. Unnerved but desperate to keep him in her sights, she rushed after him, casting spells to keep her invisible and quiet as she went.

When Tom's trail led her outside, Minerva thanked Merlin that it was an early summer night, or her slight robe would have proven quite ineffective. He rushed through the castle grounds as if he had a set destination, and by the time he reached the shore of the Black Lake, Minerva was out of breath and trying desperately not to be heard.

Tom was oblivious to his surroundings. And he had been oblivious to her for seven years. He had no reason to care or even consider that Minerva might be standing in the moon shadow of an ancient tree while he approached the gently lapping water and looked down at its surface. The full moon dipped much of the lake into an eerie glow, and Tom's reflection was well within its circle as he leaned forward and smiled.

When he straightened once again, he pushed his outer robe back and let it fall off his shoulders to pool at his feet. His coat and vest followed, and once he stood there in shirt sleeves and black trousers, gazing up at the moon, Minerva's heart sped up alarmingly.

And then it nearly stopped, because Tom unbuttoned his shirt - slowly, meticulously - and pulled it from his belt to let it slide off his arms and leave his upper body bare. His slender torso and straight back glistened in the moonlight as if he was overheated. The long muscles of his arms flexed with each movement as he undid his belt and trousers while slipping out of his shoes, before bending over and sliding all his remaining clothes down his legs and over his feet.

When there was no stitch of clothing left on his slim, moonlit body, he took a deep breath and stepped forward into the water, hissing for a moment at the cold, before casting a silent warming spell on his immediate surroundings.

Minerva whimpered softly at the sight of Tom's eerily pale skin being caressed by the inky water; he waded in until it reached his waist.

There he stopped, bending his head to gaze at his reflection. And to smile a heart-stoppingly beautiful smile which was returned in kind. He folded his long arms around himself tenderly, then let his hands glide down his sides and over his slender hips to follow the line of his thighs into the water.

He raised his head and arched his neck, laughing softly up at the moon. And suddenly, he raised his arms with a splash of water and launched himself forward in a graceful arc, disappearing below the surface and leaving only ripples behind.

Minerva tiptoed forward a few steps, but hurriedly returned to her hiding place when Tom resurfaced, shaking water from his black hair and finding his footing on the soft, shallow ground, the water now caressing his shoulders.

He turned and waded slowly back towards the shore, but stopped with a gasp when the water was just deep enough to lap at his hips. Oblivious to his wide-eyed audience, he turned to once more face the centre of the lake and the moon, and reached down to close his long fingers around his hard, pale flesh. He gasped, staggered ever so slightly without losing his footing, and gazed at the water's surface once more, this time while lazily caressing his pale, beautiful cock - warm from the spelled water, and long and full from the sight in the mirror both lake and moon had generously provided.

Leaning forward at a slight angle to not lose sight of himself, Tom dipped his free hand into the water before raising it to trail it down the pale column of his throat, leaving droplets to trickle down his lightly haired chest. He used his wet fingers to trace first one rosy bud of flesh, then the other, until they were hard and so sensitive, each touch made Tom gasp out loud. He used no restraint in the sounds he made, believing himself quite alone. His breathing grew harsher and more rapid when he finally reached down to squeeze his balls in one hand while the other stroked faster and faster up and down his cock.

Suddenly, he stopped. Panting heavily, he raised a hand to run the back of it across his forehead, released his hard flesh, and slowly moved backwards until the water only reached his calves. There, he lowered himself into the shallow water, before lying down, stretched out on his back, one leg almost entirely in the water, the other pulled up close enough to his body for his knee to be above the surface. He sighed contentedly as the artificially warmed water lapped at his groin, caressing his balls and the base of his rigid cock, and his hand once more found its way there. His other arm he stretched up above his head, then rested it under the back of his neck as a cushion and to angle himself so he could watch his even strokes and the way the water slowly evaporated off his flesh.

The water's gleam was soon replaced by that of his own arousal. In tandem with each drop of his seed welling from his tip, Tom moaned softly, his lips parted with rapturous attention to his own need and shining wetly from the unconscious caresses of his tongue over pink flesh. His fingers squeezed tirelessly in between frequent pauses he used to regulate his breathing and mercilessly keep his climax just out of reach. The smooth, pulsing length of his cock flushed ever darker the closer he came, but still, he tormented himself, whimpering with each aborted stroke as though unable to believe he had such a cruel lover.

During one of those pauses, he slid his hand up to gently cup the dark, spongy tip, squeezing it tenderly until a few extra drops rose from the slit. He brought his hand to his mouth and sucked his fingers between his lips, humming in pleasure at his own taste, his hips bucking upwards slightly.

It was after that taste Tom could no longer restrain himself. This time, when his hand closed around his cock, he squeezed hard, parted his legs further, and slid his free hand between them, breaching himself below the warm water with a gasp. And with fast, almost violently forceful, strokes, he rushed towards his climax. Groans and sighs spilled from his full, wet lips, his neck arched, the tendrils of his night dark hair floating in the water around his upturned face, his toes clenching and his legs trembling with effort, and finally, he cried out in wordless gratitude to his skill, shooting glistening spurts over his hand, stomach and thighs, again and again, all of them greedily licked away by the water churned up in his tremors, until he was clean except for his hand.

He brought it back up to his mouth, wet and salty with his seed, and licked it clean with slow, sensuous strokes of his tongue, sighing in contented pleasure.

Finally he lay back, both arms stretched out at his side, a soft smile on his lips while the moon caressed his shimmering flesh.

Minerva's heart broke. Tom had found every kind of perfection within himself and would never need or want another. Her memory of watching him pleasure himself like the most attentive of lovers would both sustain and torment her forever, but nonetheless, she burned it into her mind by replaying it over and over long even after he'd dressed and returned to the castle. And even then, her fellow witness - the silent, silver moon - seemed to mock her by refusing to give in to the morning sun, the night still stretching endlessly before her.

* * *

When Tom graduated after his seventh year, all that remained for Minerva were wishes and dreams. And for all the years left to her, and there were many, she could often be found standing on the shore of the Black Lake, calling out Tom's name even long after he had... changed so terribly. Knowing he would never answer.

 

THE END


End file.
